New River Gorge Climbing Trip
Sharp Nuttall sandstone, stiff grades and the best autumn friction in the East. Base in Fayetteville and rotate walls by aspect and temperature.
Day by day
Warm up close to the road
- 10:00 amBridge Buttress or Junkyard. Short approaches, moderate routes, two minutes from the car.
- 3:00 pmMove to whichever aspect is in the shade.
- 6:30 pmDinner in Fayetteville.
Endless Wall
- 9:00 amPark at Fern Creek and approach by the rim ladders.
- 10:00 amLong day on the classic sport lines, with the best position in the gorge.
- 5:00 pmWalk out past Diamond Point for the evening view up the gorge.
Summersville Lake
- 9:30 amDrive north to Long Point or Pirates Cove for lakeside sport.
- 1:00 pmDeep-water soloing if the weather is warm and the lake is still up before the September drawdown.
- 6:00 pmBack to Fayetteville, or eat in Summersville.
Trad and new rock
- 9:00 amBeauty Mountain for trad lines and one of the best views from any belay in the East.
- 2:00 pmOr head to the Meadow River to see where new route development is happening.
Before you go
Book ahead
- Lodging in Fayetteville, which fills every October weekend
- A guide for a first day if you are new to the rock, several services operate locally
What to bring
- A full rack for the trad areas; the sport routes are well equipped but long
- Tape. The sandstone is sharp and eats hands
- Check the NRAC access database before each day, since some cliffs sit on private land
If it rains, the sandstone stays wet and greasy for a day or more. Bouldering at Coopers Rock, two hours north, dries faster.
Outfitters and lodging on this route
Itinerary pages carry the highest booking intent on the site. Placement is sold per route.
List your business hereWhere you'll be
Endless Wall Trail
A 2.4-mile point-to-point trail along the gorge rim through hemlock and rhododendron, crossing Fern Creek on a footbridge and reaching Diamond Point, an exposed rock outcrop with a view up the gorge to the bridge.
Beauty Mountain
A long band of high-quality Nuttall sandstone on the gorge rim above Fayetteville, with a concentration of classic moderate trad and sport routes and one of the best views from any belay in the East.
Summersville Lake
West Virginia's largest lake and by a wide margin its clearest — 2,700 acres of blue-green water in a sandstone basin, popular for scuba diving, paddleboarding and boating.
Meadow River
Two things at once: an exceptional and demanding whitewater run, and one of the most significant new climbing developments in the eastern United States over the past decade, with hundreds of routes established on clean sandstone in a deep, quiet gorge.
New River Gorge Bridge
A 3,030-foot steel arch carrying US 19 some 876 feet above the New River — for decades the longest single-span arch bridge in the world, and still the image most people carry of West Virginia.